Caliban

His character is one of the few Shakespearean figures to take on a life of its own "outside" Shakespeare's own work: as Russell Hoban put it, "Caliban is one of the hungry ideas, he's always looking for someone to word him into being ... Caliban is a necessary idea".

Character

Half human, half monster. After his island becomes occupied by Prospero and his daughter Miranda, Caliban is forced into slavery. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise "not honour'd with a human shape" (Prospero, I.2.283). In some traditions he is depicted as a wild man, or a deformed man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man, a dwarf or even a tortoise.

Banished from Algiers, Sycorax was left on the isle, pregnant with Caliban, and died before Prospero's arrival. Caliban, despite his inhuman nature, clearly loved and worshipped his mother, referring to Setebos as his mother's god, and appealing to her powers against Prospero. Prospero explains his harsh treatment of Caliban by claiming that after initially befriending him, Caliban attempted to rape Miranda. Caliban confirms this gleefully, saying that if he had not been stopped he would have peopled the island with a race of Calibans – "Thou didst prevent me, I had peopled else this isle with Calibans" (Act I:ii). Prospero then entraps Caliban and torments him with harmful magic if Caliban does not obey his orders. Resentful of Prospero, Caliban takes Stephano, one of the shipwrecked servants, as a god and as his new master. Caliban learns that Stephano is neither a god nor Prospero's equal in the conclusion of the play, however, and Caliban agrees to obey Prospero again.

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds me thought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

Name

There is a long history of enthusiastic speculation on the name's origin or derivation.

One of the most prominent suggestions concerns Caliban being an anagram of the Spanish word canibal (Carib people), the source of cannibal in English. The character may be seen as a satire on "Noble cannibal" from Montaigne's Essays (A.30, "Of Cannibals").
Also popular has been comparison to kaliban or cauliban in the Romani language, which mean black or with blackness.
The first Romanichal had arrived in England a century before Shakespeare's time.

Since 1889, it has been suggested that Shakespeare may have named Caliban after the Tunisian city Calibia (now called Kelibia) that is seen on maps of the Mediterranean dating to 1529.

Many other, though less notable, suggestions have been made, primarily in the 19th century, including an Arabic word for "vile dog", a Hindu Kalee-ban "satyr of Kalee, the Hindoo Proserpine", German Kabeljau ("codfish"), etc.

Other works

In the 1844 preface to his main work, World as Will and Representation, the philosopher Schopenhauer refers to Hegel as a "spiritual Caliban".
In the film Clash of the Titans, the main antagonist is a character based on Caliban named Kalibos, the evil son of the sea goddess Thetis, transformed by Zeus from a handsome man into a monster as punishment for his malevolence.

In the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet, Caliban is re-imagined as "the Monster from the Id", a wild and violent monster that is invisible to the naked eye. The monster later turns out to be born of the subconscious of the film's Prospero character, Dr. Morbius, using the advanced technology of the Krell. Like Caliban, the monster ultimately rebels and attempts to kill its master. Captain Adams confronts Dr. Morbius with the fact that he is giving form to his subconscious, and his guilty conscience, from having brought it into existence, finally ends the monster's destructive rampage.

In the 1965 movie Doctor Zhivago, during the scene where Victor Komarovsky convinces Zhivago to allow him to rescue Lara by taking her to Vladivostok, Komarovsky refers to himself as a Caliban: "Do you accept the protection of this ignoble Caliban on any terms that Caliban cares to make?"

Caliban was the central character in James Clouser's rock ballet Caliban, a 90-minute adaptation of The Tempest that was scored with live performances by St. Elmo's Fire. The rock ballet was performed in Houston, Dallas, and Chicago in 1976 and 1977.

Caliban is the name of a character from Marvel comics. He is an albino mutant who lives underground with the Morlocks.

In the Swedish 1989 film The Journey to Melonia, an animated film loosely inspired by The Tempest, there is a character named Caliban, a creature whose face consists of mainly vegetables. Unlike Caliban in The Tempest, this Caliban is kind at heart, and even becomes a hero later in the film.

Caliban is the central character in two works of fiction that act as both re-tellings of and sequels to The Tempest: Caliban's Hour by Tad Williams (HarperCollins, 1994, ) and Rough Magic by Caryl Cude Mullin (Second City Press, 2009, ). In both works, Caliban is a more noble character and presented more as Prospero's victim rather than the villain in Shakespeare's play.

Caliban is a supporting character in Grace Tiffany's novel Ariel (HarperCollins, 2005, ), another re-telling of The Tempest; rather than having a monstrous shape, he grows up to be a handsome teenager, with his only deformity being a twisted left leg, and it is Ariel's cruel illusions and deceptions that make Prospero see him as a monster.

Rob Thurman's Cal Leandros series (first published 2006) centres around Caliban "Cal" Leandros, a half-human, half-Auphe (a nightmarish monster) hybrid who kills monsters for fun and cash in NYC with his human brother and their sleazy cohort, car-salesman Robin Goodfellow. This Cal struggles for control every day against his monster half, dealing with sarcasm and dark humor.